Some Indians Have Spent As Much As 500
Dollars During A First Visit.
Others have "made Maulids," i.e., feasted
all the poor connected with the temple with rice, meat, &c., whilst
others brought rare and expensive presents for the officials.
Such
generosity, however, is becoming rare in these unworthy days.
[FN#69] This gate was anciently called the Bab al-Atakah, "of
Deliverance."
[FN#70] Most of these entrances have been named and renamed. The Bab
Jibrail, for instance, which derives its present appellation from the
general belief that the archangel once passed through it, is generally
called in books Bab al-Jabr, the Gate of Repairing (the broken fortunes
of a friend or follower). It must not be confounded with the Mahbat
Jibrail, or the window near it in the Eastern wall, where the archangel
usually descended from heaven with the Wahy or Inspiration.
[FN#71] By some wonderful process the "Printer's Devil" converted, in
the first edition, this "ball or cone" into "bull or cow."
[FN#72] Belal, the loud-lunged crier, stood, we are informed, by Moslem
historians, upon a part of the roof on one of the walls of the Mosque.
The minaret, as the next chapter will show, was the invention of a more
tasteful age.
[FN#73] This abomination may be seen in Egypt on many of the
tombs,-those outside the Bal al-Nasr at Cairo, for instance.
[FN#74] The tale of this Weeping Pillar is well known. Some suppose it
to have been buried beneath the pulpit: others-they are few in
number-declare that it was inserted in the body of the pulpit.
[FN#75] The little domed building which figures in the native sketches,
and in all our prints of the Al-Madinah Mosque, was taken down three or
four years ago. It occupied part of the centre of the square, and was
called Kubbat al-Zayt-Dome of Oil; or Kubbat al-Shama-Dome of
Candles,-from its use as a store-room for lamps and wax candles.
[FN#76] This is its name among the illiterate, who firmly believe the
palms to be descendants of trees planted there by the hands of the
Prophet's daughter. As far as I could discover, the tradition has no
foundation, and in old times there was no garden in the hypaethral
court. The vulgar are in the habit of eating a certain kind of date,
"Al-Sayhani," in the Mosque, and of throwing the stones about; this
practice is violently denounced by the Olema.
[FN#77] Rhamnus Nabeca, Forsk. The fruit, called Nabak, is eaten, and
the leaves are used for the purpose of washing dead bodies. The visitor
is not forbidden to take fruit or water as presents from Al-Madinah,
but it is unlawful for him to carry away earth, or stones, or cakes of
dust, made for sale to the ignorant.
[FN#78] The Arabs, who, like all Orientals, are exceedingly curious
about water, take the trouble to weigh the produce of their wells; the
lighter the water, the more digestible and wholesome it is considered.
[FN#79] The common phenomenon of rivers flowing underground in Arabia
has, doubtless, suggested to the people these subterraneous passages,
with which they connect the most distant places.
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